And I'm so fucking beautiful I can't stand it

Now it is about to make its debut in Australia on Network Ten and expectations are high.

Twin Peaks is the name of a fictional mountain town in the Pacific Northwest, shrouded by fog and surrounded by Douglas firs.

When the series begins, the small town is rocked at the discovery of the body of high school beauty Laura Palmer, murdered, wrapped in plastic and washed ashore.

FBI Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) arrives in town and teams with local sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) to find the killer. It's soon evident that nothing in this weird place — particularly in David Lynch's weird place — is as it seems.

Apart from the two law enforcement officers, we meet characters such as Josie Packard (Joan Chen), a widow and owner of the struggling local sawmill; former soft porn star Sherilyn Fenn as sexy schoolgirl Audrey Horne; and veteran actor Russ Tamblyn as Dr Lawrence Jacoby, a psychiatrist who actually does wear rose-colored glasses!

Then there's The Log Lady, a woman who talks to the log she carries all the time.

Lynch joined forces with co-producer and co-creator Mark Frost, who had been a writer and story editor on Hill Street Blues, to create Twin Peaks after the pair came up with the idea.

"It was born over coffee and once you start falling in love with an idea it really doesn't matter what medium you go into," Mark says.

"The story just captivated us from the start and then the characters came along and pretty soon we were hooked and decided to get the ball rolling by going back to television."

Although the original pilot, which cost $4 million, was shot on location near Seattle, Washington, the one-hour episodes (which cost $1 million each) are shot on sets in Los Angeles.

Lynch — who recently earned more rave reviews for his off-beat film Wild At Heart, with Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage — was aware that his image might be too strange for television and relied heavily on Mark's TV track record.

"The network could have been concerned with my image had I come in on my own, but Mark took the edge off and made me more presentable," Lynch says. "He helped me stay on the highway."

Still, nobody had expected the incredible impact the series had when it first aired in America. It not only pulled in rave reviews and high ratings, but it also inspired Peaks parties, with fans gathering together each week to watch the show in a party atmosphere.

The series also produced lucrative merchandising deals which included the release of Laura Palmer's Secret Diary, a best-seller penned by Lynch's daughter, Jennifer; a cassette of FBI Agent Cooper's dictations to his secretary, Dianne; and a planned line of Agent Cooper's favorite foods — cherry pie, coffee and doughnuts.

"It was kind of like 'buckle your seat-belt,'" Mark recalls of the show's surprising rise to fame.

"The feeling I had was like those clicks you hear in the rollercoaster when you're going up that first big drop. I had seen it happen before in Hill Street Blues, where a show had shot into national prominence that quickly and I knew what we might be in for."

Much of the show's publicity was due to the mystery of Who Killed Laura Palmer? — a riddle which hadn't been topped on TV since Who Shot JR? some years earlier in Dallas.

Although the riddle has been solved in episodes already seen in America (the identity of the killer is protected so Australian fans can guess for themselves), the series has now branched out to expose other secrets in the town.